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exquisite tea posted:They get the same Tav dialogue interspersed with "must... kill" style Durge quips. I did my first Durge playthrough and didn't get any murder-themed lines at all, and then was surprised when replaying it recently to suddenly get all these crazy lines about ripping open people's guts when I was trying to play a Sorry Cop, it was pretty jarring and didn't fit with my memory or the character I was trying to play. Experimented about a bunch and learned that Voices 7 and 8 don't get the Durge lines so if you want to play a Durge who isn't constantly licking their lips about how much humanoid offal they want for supper, those are the voices to go for.
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Mar 4, 2024 02:11
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Shard posted:Been playing BG1 and just got to the werewolf island part. Before this game I assumed Baldurian died on that island. Does d&d work on multiverse rules where in one he did and in another he ended up somewhere else? Because his blade is on that island. But in 3 it is somewhere else. I guess my party could have brought it back with us but then how did it end up where it does? Honestly it's just kinda dumb what BG3 does with Balduran. The timeline is something like this: (BG3 spoilers I guess) ~300 DR: The settlement at the mouth of the Chionthar comes to be known as Baldur's gate. If he gave the city its name, he must have lived around this time. If it was named after him posthumously he lived even earlier than this. ~300 DR: Balduran does all his adventures which end with him getting shipwrecked on what comes to be known as the Isle of Balduran. Balduran is implied to have either died or is turned into a werewolf. 1000 DR, maybe?: Somehow Balduran escapes the Isle and ends up at Moonrise Towers, which is one of the headquarters of the Heralds of Faerun. He claims that he wants to return to the city in triumph by finding a treasure there (i.e. by robbing someone's house?) It's also not clear how he's still alive if he's 700 years old--he's a human and even if he's also a werewolf, lycanthropes by infection in this setting age normally. Somehow, he stumbles into the ancient illithid colony beneath Moonrise that literally nobody else discovered or will discover for another 400 years and gets turned into a Mind Flayer. But after a few years of being a thrall his dragon buddy helps him break the spell. He then hangs out in his hometown eatin' brains for four. hundred. years. Again, not clear how he's still alive since mind flayers don't live that long, which is why, like the Githyanki, they like to hang out in the astral. 1368 DR: One thousand years after Balduran's disappearance, the Bhaalspawn and their party discover the wreck of Balduran's ship. 1374 DR: Ketheic Thorm now rules Moonrise Towers and is going a bit nuts. This is the year the shadow curse begins. 1492 DR: The chosen of the dead three steal the crown of Karsus, and use it to enslave the elder brain they discovered below Moonrise Towers at some point. Lord Gortash abducts mind flayer Balduran and returns him to the mind flayer colony. The brain sends Balduran on a mission to retrieve the prism and he ends up inside it. Honestly if it wasn't independently confirmed by another NPC in the game I'd have assumed the whole narrative to be yet another one of the emperor's lies, because the story is ridiculous on its face. A lot of stuff with that character in Act 3 feels a little rushed and incongruous with the quality from before.
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Mar 6, 2024 03:47
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Oh, apparently I totally missed or mentally blocked out, they retconned him to be an elf. I can understand changing established lore if it actually fixes a problem, but it doesn't do that since the timeline still implies a multi-century span as a mind flayer. I haven't reached it again in my new playthrough but does the Emperor imply that specifically the elder brain hat is the Absolute was the one which enthralled him? In the Durge run doesn't it get implied that the Chosen literally created that particular brain? If so that'd imply that Balduran got tadpoled less than a century ago, which does work for the "he's was an elf all along" retcon but I feel introduces a whole new host of new timing issues. I only half-remember those bits though so I might have misinterpreted.
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Mar 6, 2024 04:27
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Beasteh posted:Started an honor mode run and holy poo poo I have crit failed every important roll so far, absolutely cursed Fighting the training room in the creche, I decided to try a pen-and-paper favourite of mine with my monk: run into the middle of the room, use patient defence, and just dodgetank hits to draw everyone into a small enough space to fireball. First attack from the training master is a critical hit at disadvantage, a 1 in 400 chance. I've had it happen at the table before, but when it happens in a video game, my god does it feel much, much more bullshit.
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Mar 7, 2024 14:00
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exquisite tea posted:Isn’t there a line in BG3 that points out how dumb it is to have an elf named “Jon Irenicus” or did I imagine that. I might have missed the line in BG3 but IIRC the explanation in BG2 was that his elf name was Jonaleth, but when he was stripped of his elf soul he took on a human appearance and subsequently a human name. Maybe that’s still dumb?
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Mar 17, 2024 21:25
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Shard posted:walking around the fist is more than happy to oppress the population and they work for the upper city pretty much and don't give a poo poo about the downtrodden. The metal units are always flanked by human fist members. When you go to the metal soldier factory you can hear what the units are doing including murdering a child. And most of the fist are fine with this or don't actively try to stop it. I ran a campaign where the party who had little experience of Baldur's Gate were (briefly) drafted into the Flaming Fist and were confused when the speech I had the commanding officer give about upholding the reputation of the Fist was full on "show no respect to anyone in the lower city, but beat the poo poo out of anyone who disrespects you". Since they seemed like goody two-shoes types, the commander assigned an experienced member of the Fist to "handle warrants and fines" (i.e. to kick in doors, demand bribes, and loot any crime scene for "evidence").
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Mar 21, 2024 14:11
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Shard posted:exactly. Honestly the Forgotten Realms is a poo poo hole and it really does not surprise me that a merchant city would have a police force to protect the money and gently caress everyone else. With both Ravengard and his predecessor having been both Marshall of the Fist and Grand Duke of the city, one could argue that it's an open question if the merchant city has a police force to protect the money, or if the police city has a merchant force to make the money. Though it's still "gently caress everyone else" either way, so potato potahto.
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Mar 21, 2024 15:11
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DaveSauce posted:Is there a "right" order to do act 2/moonrise? Others have mentioned you can do most stuff in any order aside from the one thing that triggers the end of the act, which is true, but I’d like to recommend that you at least visit moonrise sooner rather than later. There’s a bunch of quests that start from Moonrise, there’s vendors with some cool stuff, and it paces the act well if you go there in the middle of the act rather than showing up right at the end to just dip in and say hello before running off to the point of no return. Your choice of course!
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Mar 24, 2024 04:27
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Shard posted:How come Ao is cool with the dead three getting super involved with the mortal planes to the point of their avatars coming out in this game? Technically the dead three have the status of "quasi-deities". While most of the other gods were forced to take a bit of a step back after the Second Sundering and cease manifesting directly on Faerun, the Dead Three didn't want to do that so Ao essentially trapped them in their avatars without immortality, ala the Time of Troubles. So they can interfere as much as they want, but if someone actually kills their avatars they're gone forever. Now you might ask doesn't that mean that when you kill the Avatar of Myrkul he's just flat out dead and the party killed a god and uh, yes it does, technically. That doesn't seem to be how BG3 understands it (based on Withers telling them off) but I believe it is what the situation should be based on the other established lore.
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Mar 27, 2024 10:40
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Nektu posted:Well, I started a durge run a few weeks back, and it was surprising how different of an experience it was compared to the first run that I did shortly after release. I consider full good Durge to be a pretty enjoyable playthrough, personally, lots of pathos from the resistance to one’s fundamental nature. I’m doing open hand monk on my honour playthrough and it’s been great fun. If you pick up tavern brawler and stock up on elixirs of hill giant strength from Auntie Ethel to fuel the build it’s one of the “optimal” builds so depending on how you build the other characters it could make the game too easy. You respec into thief/monk partway through, at which point you can pick up persuasion expertise so that you don’t keep having to spend inspirations on social rolls, but I got by OK before that point with guidance and the occasional eagle’s splendour from Shadowheart.
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Apr 20, 2024 11:17
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Solo Wing Pixy posted:Trip report: Tempest Shadowheart is, indeed, working out better than Trickery did. She can actually kind of keep up on damage now and still has most of the good parts from her regular toolkit. Between that and the various sparkstruck bits I have, she is going to be the goddess of thunder within a level or two. It’s not a thing to worry about, the main thing to watch out for is there’s a few quests where certain characters will be mad if you don’t include them (or resolve them in a way they hate), but they’re all fairly obvious and if you’re trying to use all your companions you’ll surely bring them to the right stuff. Like, you’ll have heard Lae’zel talk about the crèche a bunch, so obviously bring her along when you go to the crèche, that sort of thing.
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Apr 20, 2024 11:34
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On this note, if there's anything I'd wish for in this game, it would be another party member slot or two. I always feel like I'm missing something gameplay or plot-related with just Zehra + 3 companions, or someone's going to get stuck too far behind on approval and I'll get boxed out of their personal questline. Is that an actual thing to worry about, assuming I'm trying to use all of my companions at least occasionally?
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Alan Smithee posted:so I haven't actually played it but was looking for reference videos that had characters doing the magic animations in closeup or full profile (as opposed to top down) It kind of looks like Shadowheart is doing the animation for casting speak with dead. The thumbnail has caught her in a blink so the glowing green eyes don't appear, and I dunno if it's true of this thumbnail but quite a few of the thumbnails in that style use modded outfits. EDIT: Whoops new page! Well, in other news, I'm trying out something I'm pretty sure won't make a difference. Act 3 spoilers I've used enhanced leap to skip past the interaction with Yenna at the start of rivington, and I'm going to avoid her all the way until the sewers and have all three kidnap targets in my party. I expect it'll still default to Yenna but I'm curious if it'll give me options to say "who the gently caress is Yenna" when Orin shows up. Reveilled fucked around with this message at 20:09 on Apr 21, 2024 |
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Apr 21, 2024 20:05
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wizard2 posted:re: that Act 3 character Ive seen a few people itt resolve the kidnapping in a way where Yenna ends up merely being some weird tagalong kid who is VERY proud of having her own pairing knife, and it happened to me too the first time I beat the game! I was very proud I believe that on release at least Yenna would vanish from camp if you bypassed the camp event by not resting outside the city between Gortash's warning and entering the sewers. So you'd get Gortash's warning, enter Baldur's Gate, rest up in the inn, then head for the sewers and discover Halsin (or whoever) has been kidnapped and oh look, the weird kid who the game forced on you with the strongest possible "I'm the shapeshifting villain" energy imaginable is suddenly missing, I wonder why. So a lot of people (me included) just assumed she was Orin all along. Apparently though the disappearance was a bug and that was never an intended outcome? I've heard that now she only disappears if she's the actual kidnap target.
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Apr 21, 2024 20:28
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wizard2 posted:You just kind of draw the Duegar's attention away from the magma and shut down the threats in priority with debuffs, death. As for keeping him alive? Is it worth it? No. Not particularly..but you DEFINITELY want his boots and possibly severed head as well, so try to keep him nearby. Huh, I can't imagine actually recruiting Nere, even on an evil run. On a run like that the gnome murder may not matter much but he's ultimately still the Absolute's lackey in a position of weakness. I'd have quite happily recruited Sazza or that weird-rear end cleric of Loviatar in the goblin camp, but Nere hardly seemed distinct from any other true soul.
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Apr 22, 2024 09:30
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A little update on a post about Act 3 I made earlier: as I suspected the game has no real accounting for what to do if you haven't met Yenna and have no other valid kidnap candidates. YennOrin appears in the sewers and after she's revealed herself Orin threatens to kill your "friend" like you've known Yenna all along. A bit of a shame but not surprising given that you need to deliberately set it up by jumping around a cutscene trigger.
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Apr 23, 2024 00:16
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Oh, also in relation to that thing I realised after resolving to try this experiment that I’d preemptively hosed it up by recruiting both Halsin and Minthara so we had 4 candidates and only three party slots! So I did the only thing that seemed right: I led Halsin out to the barn out back of our camp, threw a grease bottle and an achemist’s fire in his path, and then kicked him out of the party so he’d burn and die. Then I lugged his dead body down to the sewers so I could be sure all four capture targets were “occupied” at the time of the kidnapping. sorry Halsin! On my current honour mode run as a TB durge monk I am kind of starting to wonder if my party is holding me back in any situation other than full boss fights. It’s struck me that I can end pretty much every turn of the game invisible thanks to the cloak that makes you invisible on kill, as I am pumping out enough damage to easily delete an enemy every round
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Apr 23, 2024 03:21
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Solo Wing Pixy posted:oh, right, i should probably decide what character I like-like at some point, i was not expecting shadowheart to start growing on me Shadowheart as a character has some of the most authentic D&D player character energy I've ever seen, specifically the character you get when the player at the game table who always plays kind and heroic characters decides they're going to make a dark and edgy character and can't keep it up for more than about 5 minutes at a time after session 3 cause they feel bad for the NPCs. Then someone at the table reminds her she's supposed to be a cleric of Shar, so she makes a snarky comment about Selune worshippers and then goes right back to wanting to help save random strangers.
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Apr 23, 2024 11:52
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Medullah posted:I'm afraid the answer to this is "hahahaah nope!" but figured I'd ask. Would setting your default to look like the custom one work? I rearranged the default bar like this:  And it's suited me reasonably well.
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Apr 23, 2024 22:44
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Solo Wing Pixy posted:Odd question: I'm at the doorstep of Act II right now, should I cycle back and through all of the stuff in the Underdark, or would that be better saved for a second playthrough some day? I already feel a bit lost in the game's scale, which makes it tempting to just bypass it and go on to Second Questing Zone, but I also don't know if I'm going to be crippled by it or miss huge chunks of narrative. You can skip it, but I think most would recommend doing both parts of Act 1. You won't be crippled or miss huge chunks of narrative if you do skip it, but what's down there is worth seeing and like most of Act 1, there's parts that ripple on into future quests. If it's any consolation, Act 2 is shorter and more linear so you can think of that as a breather.
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Apr 26, 2024 10:32
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Dick Trauma posted:I reverted to just after the Owlbear cave. I'm going to review everyone's skills/prepared spells, inventory to get a feel for what everyone has or should have on hand. Then I have to figure out customizing each hotbar so I don't have to keep checking everyone during a fight to see what they should be doing. It should be right in front of me so I can get a basic rotation going, like Shadowheart should bless everyone. Although I keep screwing that up somehow so that only one person gets blessed. I don't have a handle on spell targeting, spells that have multiple levels/casts (like Magic Missile.) I need to figure out the interface. If you want some guidance on organising your hotbar, here's how I do it:  Each class has slightly different abilities of course but generally I stick to that format of having the basic stuff on the left, class abilities in the middle on the left of the divider, and then spells ordered by level on the right of the divider. it'll start to break down towards the end of the game when you have too many abilities but this works well for early levels. By having everyone use the same order for this stuff it makes it much easier to focus on what's different between the characters because it's the stuff that changes when you switch.
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Apr 26, 2024 15:18
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Something I've found hilarious in my current run is loading Gale up with all the gear that procs off cold damage, putting boots that make you immune to prone on your melee characters and then just dropping massive ice AoEs in any tough battle. I cannot understand why Larian decided to make prone such a devastating condition, it's completely different to how it works in the base D&D rules and once you start taking advantage of it instead of getting hosed over by it, it trivialises a lot of otherwise very difficult fights. I just finished up Shadowheart's personal quest last night and Gale just stood at the top of the stairs with Shadowheart, me and Laezel at the bottom holding Spirit Guardians, and I had Gale just drop ice storms centred on us over and over, and watched as pretty much every enemy in the room tried to close with the party, fell over and lost their turn. Then on the next turn got up, took a step forward, fell over and lost their turn. Meanwhile shadowheart just dashed around the AoE pumping the enemies up with radiant orbs. 20 enemies and the party took functionally no damage.
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Apr 26, 2024 16:14
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BlazetheInferno posted:Random thought. Any idea what Oath of Paladin Zevlor is? I know for most of the game he has none because of his backstory, but then if you summon him in the finale, he's powered up again. But I either didn't think to look and see if I could figure out which Oath he is, or couldn't figure it out. Are there signs of which one he is, or does he stick to generic Paladin stuff without any features or abilities from any of the specific Oaths? I think he uses Aura of Devotion, which makes him Oath of Devotion. Makes sense with how Zevlor struggles.
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Apr 27, 2024 01:00
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tarbrush posted:Finished honour mode! Didn't do Cazador, House of Hope or Grief and blew Gale up so the ending felt a bit lovely, but I have the dice. It's amazing how much of a wrench it is letting down these collections of pixels and voices even when you've saved them properly the first two times round. My current honour mode run is my second time reaching Act 3 and the first time I skipped the house of hope so I didn’t know what to expect from the final fight other than the song. When I got to the fight at the end and saw the layout of that fight I almost had a heart attack! But it ended up being not too difficult—I had Shadowheart drop a massive radiant AoE to soak up all of the cambions’ vengeance all at once (and blood of Lathander ensured she survived on 1HP), Gael dropped them all prone with a big ice AoE, and meanwhile my monk zipped around destroying the pillars in two punches each. Once all that was done, Shadowheart mopped up with spirit guardians and a few stunning strikes and ice spells kept Raphael permanently prone and stunned while I churned through his 666 HP. I was kind of sad I couldn’t save Korilla, but Yurgir just straight up executed her on the very first turn in combat Oh, and Laezel was there too, I guess. Kind of disappointed in the EK TB throw build I have for her. It’s nice but it just doesn’t hold a candle to my monk’s damage and it doesn’t have any of the control of Shadowheart’s luminous gear or Gale’s ice control. I’m also finding Selune’s Spear of Night to have an infuriatingly buggy hitbox, despite this supposedly being the best in slot weapon for an EK thrower it’s loving impossible to throw in any sort of indoor area because it’s path gets interrupted on stuff that is absolutely not in its path, as evidenced by the same throws being possible with both smaller javelins and larger pikes. I’m not sure why this isn’t brought up by people discussing the weapon because it’s making the thing unusable in practice and I can’t believe nobody’s noticed, unless it’s just a bug I’m having.
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Apr 27, 2024 12:37
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exquisite tea posted:The flight trajectory for thrown weapons gets brought up but usually in the context of Karlach, because she has the largest character model and it does mess her up in a few tight spaces, especially if you're feeding her Enlarge and Elixir of the Colossus. True, but at least I can understand that, it’s annoying but it makes sense at least. Selune’s spear (maybe other spears, I haven’t tested) though is just straight up hosed somehow, I’ll target an enemy and be told that the path is interrupted by a pillar two metres to the right of where I’m throwing, which no other throwing weapon gets caught on if I try throwing that instead. There’s definitely something broken about that spear’s thrown hitbox.
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Apr 27, 2024 12:53
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Mzbundifund posted:Is the DC for falling prone on an ice patch based on the spell save DC of the one who created the terrain patch? That’s really nuts. What have you got his DC up to? Nothing too crazy, I think 19 from +4 proficiency, +5 INT, +1 from his staff and +1 from his robe, which almost any Gale can have from late Act 2 onward. But his Winter's Clutches gloves inflict Encrusted with Frost on all targets in a cold AoE, which applies disadvantage on dexterity saving throws, and the boots of stormy clamor apply 2 charges of reverberation whenever Encrusted with Frost is applied (i.e. to everyone in the AoE, which is a stacking -1 to physical saving throws, which includes Dex. Plus both the gloves and boots are available in Act 1, so the only real limitation early on is getting ways to make your characters not fall over. The Hoarfrost Boots from the Creche and Minthara's Boots of Striding do a good job here, and then late in Act 1 you can pick up the Disintegrating Night Walkers.
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Apr 27, 2024 16:45
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LifeLynx posted:I haven't finished honor mode yet, but next time I play it's going to be on tactician with no savescumming. That's really the only part of honor mode I like. The game's a lot more immersive when I'm not relying on the F8 key to get out of every small jam. For me it's been the opposite, the appeal in Honour Mode has been the souped up fights with cool new mechanics and the tweaks that fix damage riders. I'm not personally much enamoured with the "no reloads" thing, it feel like it's forced some incredibly cautious play from me that's been occasionally kind of tedious. I'll get my golden dice and in future see if I can get a mod to give me the honour mode difficulty changes without the single save file.
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Apr 27, 2024 18:15
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Docjowles posted:I'm back nearing the end of Act 2 HM. I lost my last run on the final boss of the act so trying to overprepare. My plan last time was the same as every other boss, kill him in 1 round which did not work AT ALL. He was too powerful to simply ignore mechanics and brute force which I hadn't really run into before even on HM. My Honour Mode setup for this fight was Durge OH Monk, Frost Wizard Gale, Light Orb Shadowheart and, uh, Rando Chump Wyll. My strategy for the fight was as follows: All party members popped invisibility potions to position themselves for the fight. Gale moved over to Dame Aylin, Durge jumped up behind the mind flayer, Wyll and SH positioned themselves on the ledge with the necromites. I passed the persuasion check to skip phase 1 of the fight. First turn of the fight I had Durge delete the mind flayer. Shadowheart's guardians cleaned up the necromites on the ledge, and Gale freed Dame Aylin. On subsequent turns, Gale dropped as many AoEs on his side of the arena as he could to hit the intellect devourers, necromites and avatar. Shadowheart's guardians took out necromites on her side of the arena. Durge used her monk speed to take out necromites near the room's entrance. Priority #1 was ensuring that the avatar never got a turn with an animated necromite to draw from. If on any turn there were no necromites near Shadowheart, Gale or Durge, they'd focus the boss instead. We ground the boss down until he had lost enough HP that we could all just directly unload on him and finish him off in one last round while ignoring the necromites. Also, Wyll was there. EDIT: Ah, you already got through it! Congrats!
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Apr 29, 2024 11:05
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Solo Wing Pixy posted:I feel like I'm missing something with how attacks out of stealth work. I've been splitting Astarion off from the rest of my party and having him start fights by sniping enemies from stealth, then having the rest of my party standing by to start the actual fight. Sometimes it works fine and the enemies get surprised! Usually, it doesn't do anything and starts combat like normal, though with an enemy missing like 25-30 HP. Once or twice, he's successfully shot the enemy, which somehow resulted in my party getting ambushed! If anyone knows what I'm doing wrong, please explain it to me because I'm dumb thanks. My party's absolutely not built around stealth, but it would be nice to get that free turn, or at least to stop enemies I can see from ambushing me. I have no idea if this is actually true, but I've heard that the most reliable way to get surprise is to be in turn-based mode, pass through an enemy's cone of vision in stealth (so that a hiding check is rolled) and then make an attack. That will put only the character you're controlling in combat, so you then need to get the other characters into combat on the same turn, so make sure to swap over to them to get them all involved otherwise they'll just hang back like chumps. Supposedly, you can't surprise non-hostile enemies (yellow circles)
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Apr 30, 2024 12:00
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I'm about to go get Orin's Netherstone here at the end of Act 3. I'm in honour mode so I don't want to throw it right on the final stretch here, but I've mostly taken thematically appropriate characters to various quests and I'm now wondering if I should take a party of Minthara, Jaheira and Minsc, since I didn't take any of them the first time round. Problem would be, I don't have particularly strong builds and gear for them (and like, respeccing Minsc as a TB thrower just seems kind of wrong). Anyone know how much impact they have on the conversations for that quest? That aside, I just completed the Wyrmway quest for Wyll and I'm really surprised how totally broken the weirdness in the dialogue at the end still is. We kill Ansur, and then Wyll has three conversations in a row with me. First he says the Wyrm is dead and then he and I both do the squirmies like we're using our parasites for communication but there's literally no words for like 20 seconds before the Emperor tries to cheer us up before Wyll just up and decides killing this dragon could make him Grand Duke and everybody would totally look past the looks, and then seconds later he's decided he doesn't want to be Grand Duke after all, no, he's the Blade of Avernus now. Then as soon as that convo is done there's an exclamation for another, in which Wyll savours his "new title for a new man" a man he's been for just ten loving seconds and how he's totally like Balduran with pillars inside him now. And then that conversation ends and there's a third where he has a sadface now and says we need to speak to his dad. So we go back to speak to his dad, and I tell him what happened and he's all like "oh, that's a shame, but with you champions leading the charge, I couldn't be more optimistic for the city's future!" to which Wyll responds "but we failed, Ansur is dead. And ravengard fires back with "Yes, that's a shame, but with you champions leading the charge, I couldn't be more optimistic for the city's future!" Then Duke Ravengard offers to make Wyll Grand Duke and Wyll says they wouldn't accept his devilish visage. Nonsense says Ravengard, they'll see past that when I tell them how cool and heroic my nepobaby son is. So now Wyll has a choice, is he going to take that power or reject it? I have a strong feeling of Deja Vu. He rejects it and says he's going to rename himself the Blade of Avernus, even though he already did that while standing over Ansur's corpse. I think this is my least favourite quest in Act 3. The dungeon is cool and so is the fight, but Wyll just comes across as such a milquetoast nothing, the dialogue triggers appear to be heavily bugged, and the retcons to established history just make me want to yell"This is all loving stupid, you're not Balduran, none of your story makes any goddamn sense aaaaaaaaaaaaaah" whenever the guy hanging out in the astral prism opens his mouth to talk about himself.
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May 2, 2024 00:49
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Roughly speaking D&D categories are: Beast - A mundane animal that actually exists IRL. Owls are beasts, bears are beasts, owlbears are not beasts. Extinct animals also count so a T-Rex is a beast, and giant versions of animals count too, so a Giant Spider is a beast. Humanoid - Any upright creature following the basic human template of two legs, two arms etc. either medium or small in size. Giant - Most things that fit the humanoid template but are significantly larger than humans are giants. Orges, for example, are giants. Construct - Any object magically animated. robots, golems, arcane turrets, animated armours. Monstrosity - Creatures created by evil magic. Famous creatures from mythology fit here like Hydras, Harpies, Centaurs, Minotaurs, but also Owlbears and Umber Hulks. A reliable rule of thumb is if the creature doesn't exist IRL but has an IRL legend around it, it's a monstrosity. Owlbears slot in here either because an evil wizard made them or because thematically they fit in with sphinxes, minotaurs, hippogriffs and manticores as a mashup of multiple animals. Undead - Animated dead things. Also entities summoned from the shadowfell. Ghosts, wraiths, shadows, vampires. Technically Astarion should count as undead, not humanoid, and therefore be immune to Hold Person but I'm not sure he is in game. Plant - Animated vegetable matter like twig blights and shambling mounds. Don't tell a taxonomist but fungal creatures are also counted as plants by the game, so Myconids are plants too. Dragon - Dragons. Obviously. Fey/Fiend/Celestial/Elemental - Entities from other planes of existence. Its usually fairly straightforward to tell them apart, unless they're disguised in humanoid appearance. There's a few spells which target these sorts of creatures specifically, sometimes also including Undead. Hags being Fey might be non-obvious, so that's one to watch out for. Aberration - Entities from the Far Realms beyond the multiverse. Aberrations are cosmic/body horror entites that tend to have weird abilities that drive you mad or assault you psychically, and have tentacles, loads of eyes, loads of mouths, etc. Spectators and Mind Flayers are aberrations. Ooze - It's kind of weird that slimes get their own entire category, but they do.
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May 2, 2024 14:06
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Solo Wing Pixy posted:
I think it’s kind of interesting the way Yurgir is set up because the game spends a fair bit of time reinforcing the idea that if you spot someone ambushing the correct play is to get the drop on them instead by attacking first. But in Yurgir’s case, following through on the lesson the game teaches ensures you don’t speak to him and find out what his whole deal was. My first time through the game I never really felt like I understood what was going on in the Gauntlet. Why is there a devil hiding down here? Why was the gauntlet ruined? Why are there all these weirdo rats about? Grasping that wasn’t strictly necessary, but it did leave the gauntlet feeling, I dunno, kind of unmoored from a sense of time and place in the world.
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May 4, 2024 13:43
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Finished Honour Mode and got my golden dice, zero chomped tadpoles  I think Wyll's bugs at the end of his companion quest continued into the ending, I got a scene with Karlach and Wyll doing stuff together and there were these big pauses which I think Wyll was supposed to say stuff in but he just stood mute. Kind of a downer on an otherwise good ending.
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May 4, 2024 23:00
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tarbrush posted:I am sad, I am doing an origin honour mode run, and I managed to nat 1 the illithid persuade on the goblin guards. So now the whole goblin ruin is aggroed, so no Minty I'm pretty sure getting Minthara nowadays is just a matter of dunking her with a non-lethal attack. It used to be that you had to jump through massive complicated hoops if you didn't want to wipe out the grove but they've made it simpler now. Just be careful if you have to knock her out in a big fight that you don't drop an AoE that kills her after you've downed her non-lethally.
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May 6, 2024 23:02
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For that fight on my Honour Mode run I brought Wyll, Gale and Shadowheart alongside my Monk. My Monk charged in to take out high-value targets, Shadowheart used Spirit Guardians and moved to the bottom of the stairs to begin building radiant orb stacks on anything trying to rush the stairs then moved left to deal with the gnolls, Wyll used his Eldritch Blast to punt the archers off the rafters, and meanwhile Gale dropped some ice storms followed by a few fireball scrolls which melted the ice then began following up with more ice spells to refreeze the water and force more prone saving throws (which breaks concentration for the handful of casters in that fight too).
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May 8, 2024 00:54
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I was a bit confused on my durge honour run when I beat Orin in the duel and then all the other cultists just stood about moaning about my decisions, none of them aggroed. So I just started punting them off the stairs into the chasms below with shoves from back to front until they were all dead. Buttkicking, for goodness!
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May 9, 2024 04:13
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Solo Wing Pixy posted:and another romance scene with Zehra and Gale. it's very sweet and cute and pretty and only slightly diminished by her being covered in blood the whole time. Quick tip on that front! In various places around Act 3 you can find soap, which removes dirt and blood and is infinitely reusable.
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May 11, 2024 12:43
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